East Harptree Nursery Pre School and Forest School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Staff create a welcoming and stimulating environment.

Children are happy, secure and show eagerness to learn. They confidently make choices in their play and focus well on their chosen activities.Children enjoy a wide range of opportunities to be active both indoors and outdoors, including weekly forest-school sessions.

Staff are passionate about developing children's understanding of the natural world, such as teaching them about the important role of insects as they hunt for bugs. Children take risks and learn how to keep themselves safe. Staff have high expectations for all children and provide effective support to ...ensure good progress.

They know the individual children well and build on their skills and knowledge through sensitive interaction. For instance, staff patiently teach children how to use pipettes and help them to discover what happens when water is squirted onto ice.Children form good friendships and enjoy one another's company, often creating role-play activities together.

For instance, they pretend to cook with play dough and serve one another in a café or offer car-wash services while playing with ride-on toys. Staff set good examples and offer clear explanations to support children's understanding of positive behaviour. Children show kindness and respect to one another as they share and take turns effectively.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

The new managers are committed to providing a high-quality provision and have implemented many positive changes. However, they do not ensure that a progress check is completed for children aged between two and three years as required. This oversight has minimal impact on children's progress as the staff monitor children's learning effectively from the start and provide necessary support in a timely manner, working with other professionals where needed.

The managers are keen to provide a rich curriculum. They plan a wide range of engaging activities each day and arrange additional lessons such as yoga and drama to further enhance children's all-around development. Children are keen to try out new activities and demonstrate a positive attitude to learning.

The managers use additional funding effectively to enhance and broaden children's experiences.Partnerships with parents are effective and parents are well informed of their children's progress, including information on how to support children's learning at home. This helps to provide consistency of care and learning for the children.

Staff support children's language skills effectively. They use incidental opportunities to promote interesting conversations and encourage children to share their opinions. For instance, children notice a fan outside and discuss its purpose and how it works.

Staff regularly introduce new words to widen children's vocabulary and ask questions that challenge their thinking skills.Staff are skilled at reading stories. They use actions and different voices to engage children and encourage them to join in with familiar phrases.

Children demonstrate their love of books as they focus intently during story time and look at books independently. Staff plan a range of opportunities to promote children's mark-making skills. However, on occasion, these do not match the interest of some children and staff miss opportunities to challenge their early writing skills as well as possible.

Children develop good levels of independence and self-care skills. For instance, they know to tidy their plates and cups after snack time and enjoy getting involved in cleaning and washing up. Children learn to respect and look after their own environment.

Staff offer strong support for children's emotional well-being. Children have regular opportunities to reflect on their emotions. For instance, each morning they place their name on an emotion that matches how they are feeling.

Staff regularly use the language of feelings to support children to express themselves and to empathise with one another.Training opportunities are targeted effectively to strengthen staff knowledge and skills. For example, following recent training, staff have introduced small-group sessions that help to support children's social and emotional development even further.

Managers supervise staff regularly and offer them guidance to help further develop their quality of practice.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The managers ensure staff keep their safeguarding knowledge up to date.

Staff have a good knowledge of the signs and symptoms which may indicate that children are at risk of harm. They are confident with the procedures to follow if they have a concern about a child in their care. Staff are well deployed and know how to identify and minimise risks, such as checking to ensure that the outdoor area is safe before children go outside.

Appropriate policies and procedures are in place to ensure a strong safeguarding culture, including the use of mobile phones and cameras at the setting.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To meet the requirements of the early years foundation stage, the provider must: Due date ensure the required progress checks are completed and shared with parents for all children aged between two and three years.24/02/2020 To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: maximise opportunities to motivate all children to practise and develop their early writing skills.